


Worldflower

by SeventhAgent



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Apocalypse, Camping, Corrupted Heroes, Depression, Drunk Singing, Epic, Gen, Love is Destructive, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rebirth, Summer Vacation, other characters to be added - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 15:56:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4570512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeventhAgent/pseuds/SeventhAgent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is peaceful in Worldlflower, that peaceful sunlit vilage beside an endless forest. Even the looming threat of the school year is nothing to Xion and her two best friends. Besides, they have enough time to squeeze in one last camping trip before it starts, right? Maybe she can finally confess to that cute Roxas kid...</p><p>But something is wrong. Terribly wrong. Someone is following Xion...someone strangely familiar. And they will stop at nothing to make sure that Xion knows, in her heart, that the whole world is about to come crashing down.</p><p>"And it'll be your fault, Xion. All your fault."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Worldflower

Chapter One

 

_Sand. That's how it feels—like sand. Sand from the dream, months ago. From the island. The memories are sand. They're running through my fingers, piece by piece, and I know that soon they'll all be scattered to the winds and the Worlds._

_The Heartless scatter too. I carve them to shreds with these Keyblades of mine—watch those blades with me. Watch the way they catch the neon lights of the Dark City. Pale flickering green, sickly yellow. Electric blue. The color of your eyes._

_Sand._

_I wonder how many I'll be able to kill. I'm not weak—the Organization taught me to fight, and I'll turn it against them. They should've known better—their mistake. I'm no pawn. Where was it, that they tried to make us fight each other? Somewhere dark. The City? No. Bright orange. Pumpkins, flames, tombstones._

_I want to line up the pieces: yours and mine. If they'd just stop slipping away...if they'd just stop. Please. Stop._

_Blue, blue, electric blue. The color of your eyes._

_Someone up there, on the tower. Blindfolded man. Think I know him. Don't care. I hate...I hate everything. There's enough hate for everyone. You gave that to me too. Thank you..._

_Thank you..._

_Oh god. No._

_Not that. Please, not that._

_What was your name?_

_Don't leave me without it. Please, no. I can't fight him without your name._

_Don't leave me alone!_

_Don't leave me--_

 

* * *

 

 

The wind stirred. It brushed over the soft bed of clover, stirred the heavy humid air of late summer. Tree sap and pollen hung thick in the air. Xion felt the heave of her own chest, listened to the panicked pounding of her heart.  _Slow. Everything's slow. Everything's sweet. Just a dream_ .

Another breath. Sweet air. Honeyed air. Somewhere, the drone of a bumblebee, a snip of birdsong. The sunlight filled the darkness behind her eyelids with a nasty orange—she pushed her hair over her face with a grunt and shielded herself with her arms.

_Everything is peaceful_ , she thought, and allowed herself a yawn. Maybe if she calmed down enough, she could fight off the nightmares. It had worked so well last night: nothing about dark cities, about missions from men in black, about shadow-monsters. Just thunderstorms made of ice cream. Gleaming droplets of delicious, thoroughly un-nutritious, sugary sea salt ice cream. And who doesn't love sea salt ice cream?

But the nightmares came back anyway. They slipped through the cracks, into quiet midday naps. Left her there in the darkness, in the city, feeling the jittery desperation, the cold iron hatred, and something worse beneath it all, something selfish and agonized that simmered and burned away everything good, focusing single-mindedly on one thing.

“Xion!” The smarmy, contented cat voice of Axel floated out from the orange of her eyelids. Xion closed them tighter. “The unstoppable, the infuriating, the  _ultimate_ in lazy-boned layabouts!”

She mumbled a pile of cursewords under her breath and turned over in the cloverbed. So soft. _Just ten more seconds of sleep. Just ten more._

“Come on, Axel.” Another voice. Mellow, low, and just a tiny bit musical.

“Okay, fine. You can keep the title if you want, Roxas. Now come on and poke her with a stick till she wakes up, will ya? Look at this right here. This twig? It's perfect. Look at the spines! It's the omega twig. Go on.”

_Why are my friends terrible, terrible people?_

“Not gonna do that, Axel...”

_Except you, Roxas. You're an amazing person._

“...and besides, she's already on poison ivy. She's gonna have enough problems.”

Xion's eyes shot open. Half-blinded by the sunlight, she hopped up from the clover-bed, wobbled, shot her hand out at a nearby scraggly tree-trunk and nearly punched Roxas in the face. She blinked, rubbed her eyes ( _no no no poison ivy bad idea don't too late god damn it_ ) and glanced at the clover bed.

The completely normal, extremely soft, slightly flattened bed of clover in forest clearing.

Axel rubbed his red stubble with his long, slim fingers. “Not bad, Roxas. Not bad at all.” He stretched out and leaned against the scraggly tree. “You monster.”

Roxas stood on the other side of Xion, his mouth twitching as he fought a smile. He folded his arms—a habit he picked up from Axel that didn't work quite as well. While it helped Axel with his whole don't-give-a-damn punk vibe, it made Roxas look like a miffed elf.

A very  _cute_ miffed elf. With fuzzy blonde hair popping up all mopey-like on both sides.  _Focus. Time to get mad_ . Xion took a deep breath, puffed out her chest...and realized she wasn't feeling it. Not real anger, and not the “just kidding” anger she was supposed to be feeling right now.

Nothing not but leftover cold from the dark city—that and a faint sort of happiness to be awake, to be far away from the dreams, even if fragments of them kept rising up in her mind's eye...

“Blue, blue, electric blue,” she muttered, and frowned. Roxas raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“I had a dream,”

Axel's green eyes flashed deviously. “ _Oooo_ . Very nice. What kind of dream?”

“I don't know,” said Xion quietly. A tremor slipped into her voice. “Just a dream.” _The hatred...there was so much hatred and so much pain..._

The smile on Axel's face faded. “Sorry. Didn't mean to be mean or anything.”

“You okay, Xi?” Roxas stepped closer, eyes wide with worry. Always worrying about something, always trying to help everybody. Sometimes it was nice, and other times it really pissed her off. This time? This time she welcomed it.

“I'm alright,” said Xion.

Roxas tilted his head. “Really?”

“Really,” said Xion. “And honestly, I'm glad you guys woke me up. It was a bad one.”

Axel nodded sagely. “See, Roxas? You get to be the hero of this story after all.”

“Nah—I'm not letting either of you off the hook. Roxas, you made me think I was going to be spending the rest of my vacation covered in blotches.”

Roxas grinned sheepishly. “It was...for the greater good?”

“And  _you_ , Axel—you wanted to poke me with a stick,” said Xion, and jabbed him in the center of his chest for emphasis.

“It wasn't a  _pointy_ stick,” muttered Axel. “Not as pointy as your damn fingers, anyway.”

“Uhuh. You called it...what did he call it again?”

“The alpha twig,” said Roxas.

Axel shook his head. “The omega twig, actually. Wait. Shit.”

“Prosecution rests her case. Thanks, Roxas.”

“No problem.”

“Okay, that omega twig? It was  _mildly_ pointy. At best. The name was...it was ironic.”

“That's not what irony is,” said Roxas.

“It's completely what irony is. You have no grasp of irony. Xion! Help me out here. You're good at English stuff. Who's right?”

“Oh, gee,” said Xion. “I'd help but I just...” She took a deep, dramatic breath. “Well! I'm too lazy.”

“You're lazy when it's convenient,” Axel snapped. “Which is the worst kind. I'm equal opportunity lazy. Now come on and stop it already.  _Some_ of us are getting ready for the campout.”

“You mean me,” said Roxas.

“I mean the both of us,” said Axel. “I've been...moral support. Go, Roxas! You go, what with your massive skill with...buying stuff. Yeah. Great job.”

Roxas sighed. “Xion, why do we even...?”

Xion shook her head, grinning. “I don't know why we even.”

“Oh, please. Because I took pity on you two losers. Besides, better be my friend than my enemy, right? If you had an enemy  _this_ pretty--” Axel brushed a hand through his mop of red hair and batted his eyelashes “--you would be doomed for life. For  _life_ .”

“C'mon, you're not  _that_ \--”

“DOOMED. FOR. LIFE.”

So it went on--jabs, bickering, smiles. The sun shone bright over the endless forest and the wooden town on its edge, and there was nothing to worry about. Not till summer vacation ended, anyway—but that was a week, and there was no point in fussing about that. School would come when it did, and the endless forest and the small village beside it would slip into the cool whirlwinds of fall.

Xion, Roxas, and Axel stepped out from the shade of the forest onto Main Street, cooking up last-minute plans for camping trips, for treehouses, for last-minute pranks on Lightning (who was—as Axel insisted again and again—the literal worst person in every world ever, bar none, and pink hair was really just a rip-off of his trademark  _red_ , thank-you-very-much), and there was just nothing to worry about at all.

The stranger in the black cloak watched them from the roof of the general store, motionless.  _None of you know, do you? None of you know that it's all going to fade...that you're all going to die._

Below, the three entered Figaro Fix-It, a ramshackle old hardware store near the cul-de-sac of the street. Xion was the last to go—she paused for a moment, lost in a last fading fragment of the dark city nightmare. She blinked, swallowed, and stepped inside just as the door swung shut.

The stranger's hand balled into a fist.

_None of you know it's all her fault_ .

 

**Author's Note:**

> Heya! This is the first work I've written specifically for the Archive, and I'm pretty proud of it. I've had this one on the back of my mind for a couple years now, but I've been focusing more on my own original work. Fanfiction is rather hard, after all, to turn into a career. Still, this project keeps leaping out of my subconscious again and again, and I think it's one worth telling.
> 
> Anyway, I really hope you all enjoyed this first chapter, and I hope to keep working on this project steadily over the next year or so. Xion and co. have a lot more than a camping trip in store for them. A whole lot more...


End file.
